Premiering April 13 on The Comedy Network, the mumbling Canadian smartass’s weekly Sports Show with Norm Macdonald will be performed in front of a live audience. It’s going to be similar in style to his well-received gig as SNL’s Weekend Update anchor in the 1990s.
The new show is a natural vehicle for the mischievous Macdonald. Still, he’s the first to admit that he had his reservations about taking it on. “When they approached me with it, I didn’t really want to do it,” he said recently over the phone from Calgary, where he was performing a string of stand-up shows. “There’s a lot of challenging things with it.”
Macdonald isn’t worried about being muzzled – not on the cable-only Comedy Network or on Comedy Central, where his show will air south of the border. But he is concerned about the challenges of mocking a franchise that already has fun with itself. “Since news programs are so ridiculous and self-important, they’re easy to poke fun at,” Macdonald explains. “Jon Stewart can do that.”
But ESPN’s highly rated SportsCenter doesn’t take itself as seriously, which makes it trickier to parody. Its own promotional commercials, using sports anchors and prominent athletes (such as basketball’s LeBron James) are slick and hip. “SportsCentre is already a cool, ironic and self-referential show,” says Macdonald, who begins a short stand-up tour of Ontario on March 6. “It’s a tough line to walk, parodying it.”
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I'm up to part 6 right now, so far Adam Carolla's driving me crazy. He's barely even letting Norm talk, he just keeps rambling on and on. He's gotta let the mowing the lawn thing go, he's mentioned it about 78 times so far. I think he's jealous.
"But it was really fun, because it's perfect for me, 'cause I just think of stuff all the time, and then there's nowhere to put it, you know? You don't have to run it past anybody, you can just put it out there.
"(But) I'm going to cut down on my tweeting, because so many people are angry at me."
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No! We finally got Normie to come out of his hole, don't spook him back into it!
On a side note, maybe I just don't fully understand how it works, but I don't get why people would set it so they get alerts any time someone they follow tweets (or maybe you can just set it for specific people). I only follow 27 people, which is WAY under the average from what it sounds like, and I still get around 10 tweets an hour on average, if not more. I would not want my phone going off that much, that'd drive me absolutely crazy. Who needs to read a tweet that fast?
This Saturday at 10pm et/pt, Norm Macdonald explains how often (and how strongly) men think about sex in his first ever hour-long stand-up special.
You probably know Norm from his time as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, where he developed a reputation for being one of the most controversial performers in the show's history. He also wrote and starred in the films Dirty Work and Screwed, as well as his own sitcom, The Norm Show. Next month, he gets back behind the desk for "Sports Show with Norm Macdonald" premiering April 13th at 10pm. But first things first....
Tune into Norm's special "Me Doing Stand-Up", this Saturday at 10pm et/pt, exclusively on The Comedy Network.
Norm was in great form on the Opie and Anthony show yesterday. He talked a little about his sports gambling addiction and getting fired from SNL. Really looking forward to this show.
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"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan Freedom consonant with responsibility.
Something I found mind-blowing (at least kind of) is that his brother is a CBC reporter, Neil MacDonald (Washington bureau chief IIRC) . I know, same last name and all, but MacDonalds are a dime a dozen.
Not at all, as I've said, I would rather start with LA over any of the other WC playoff teams. Bunch of underachievers who look good on paper but don't even deserve to be in the playoffs.
